We want our packaging to have the lowest possible impact on the world around us.

We wouldn’t be able to have a 100% recycled plastic bottle if people didn’t recycle the plastic in the first place. So you could say that we’re big fans of recycling.  Here’s some info to help you recycle our smoothie packaging and maintain this virtuous loop.

The bottles are fully recyclable, so please pop them into your recycling bin when you¹re done with them.

Despite most people thinking otherwise, our cartons are recyclable. The issue is that not all UK councils currently recycle them, in the same way that most councils didn't take plastic bottles 5 years ago.

This situation is changing though - TetraPak have invested over £1.5m to support local authorities in setting up recycling and collection facilities, and are getting great results with up to 85% of all councils in the UK now providing some form of carton recycling facilities. You can read more about their efforts here.

To find out whether you can recycle beverage cartons in your area, visit tetrapakrecycling.co.uk and use the map to see if your council currently has a collection scheme.  If your council doesn't recycle Tetra Pak cartons, we've also got a letter you can send them to encourage them to start.

Asides from recycling, there are lots of other things that you can do with an empty carton, some ideas that we know about are:

• Cut the carton in half, fill it with soil and compost, and use it to grow herbs or flowers
• Wash it out, put some rice inside, put the cap back on, and you have an instant maraca,. Shake it.
• Make handbags and things.

Our veg pots are made from a special type of plastic so that they can go in the microwave (it's called polypropylene or PP for short) . At the moment only a few local councils recycle PP but hopefully, like bottle and carton recycling, more and more councils will start to recycle this sort of plastic very soon.

You can find out if yours does at www.recyclenow.com . Those councils who do recycle this sort of plastic will have it listed under 'Materials accepted' as 'plastic' rather than just 'plastic bottles'.

If you're in an area where your local council doesn't recycle as yet, pop down to the recycling point at your local supermarket to see if you can drop off your empty pots there instead.

We know this isn't great so we're working on a better long term solution. As well as trying to get more places to recycle our pots, we're also looking to make them out of recycled plastic (just like our smoothie bottles).

There aren't many people out there asking for PP in a recycled form right now, so there is a lot of work to be done to work on recycling technologies and making sure the recycled plastic will be safe for storing food. We're talking to the government and a few other groups who are already doing trials in this area. However, these trials will take quite a few months, until March 2009 at least. It's technical but our engineering friends are onto it. So in the meantime, we're trying to reduce the amount of plastic used in the pots, and investigating a few other options as well.

We'll let you know when we get there.

Finding a recycling bank

Here's a clever thing - to find your nearest recycling bank for plastic, paper, glass and lots of other things, go to this website and enter your postcode, or text 'waste' and your postcode to 60060.

Or you can phone and ask your local authority about where to recycle any material - find the contact details of yours here.

If your council doesn't recycle Tetra Pak cartons, we've also got a letter you can send them to encourage them to start.

We hope this information helps answer some of your questions. As we said, we're far from perfect but we are pushing forward in this area more than any other company we know and we aim to get better and better. And if you've got any ideas about how we can do this, then please let us know at hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk.